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norcumi.... so, I had this Warcrack idea the other day. It creeped me the hell out. I find that co-dependent relationships creep me the hell out, and this idea was about All That to the point where it gave me the wiggens.
I of course have been having to write it ever since. So. Er. This is one of the stories where I come up for air after a scene, reread it, and go ".... holy crap I'm a sick f##k." Not beta-ed, since I just want this monster out of my brain, and this way I can call it a Halloween horror thing and be done with it.
WARNINGS: rated R (minimum) for gore, torture of animals and people, and mind-f**kery. No, really, I'm not joking about this. Also, not really proof-read. And presumes knowledge of Warcraft. And was mostly written at ungodly in the morning. So in short, please feel free to skip this; I won't be at all offended.
This didn't really help me discover my problems and work through it, it just scared the ever-lovin' crap out of me.
They'd been born twins, his brother elder by all of five minutes. It had always seemed right, then, that his older brother had always been stronger, more outgoing, friendlier, the one all wanted to know and be with. He had been his twin's shadow.
He had felt naked when Prince Arthas had required his older brother's services as a groom. His older brother had been conscripted, taken away, leaving him an amputee with all his limbs, alone to run the hostelry.
It had gotten worse when he heard of his twin's fate. Like so many of Arthas's – Prince no longer, not here, not even in name! - men, he had gone off to Northrend, and died there. He had thought it was odd at the time: shouldn't he have known? Shouldn't he have felt the fatal blow, the long cold pain of freezing unto nothingness -
He could not even tell how his twin had died.
When his older brother had left, a part of him had died as well. Naked no longer, he was a walking ghost, like the undead monstrosities that plagued the land. Like them, he fled Lorderon's lands. He retreated to the strange wilds of Elwynn.
He... survived there. He didn't know how to live anymore. But somehow he built up a small farm by himself just outside of Goldshire, working with several other lonely men who had no one and no thing else. They kept to themselves and their whisky bottles, as rumors of the wider world baffled them in the tavern at week's end.
Alien beings, blue and hooved but not demons, walking amongst the Alliance. Strange magics and more undead. Undead who were not evil, but had in fact turned against Arthas and now defended Light's Hope. A growing battle against the once Prince.
He fought his own battle, deep inside the day he heard about that. The Alliance – and Light forfend, the Horde as well! - were traveling back to those bedamned shores to destroy the monster who made him a shadow of a man.
He left the farm the next day. A few weeks after that, he was in the Borean Tundra with hundreds of others, some conscripted, some volunteers. All had their stories of woe and grief, and there were many axes to grind against Lorderon's once Prince.
He began to feel more whole, here. There were others who understood. And in theory, he was not too far – a week at most! - from the place his twin had landed, had been stranded at, and perhaps had died at.
It made him feel like he was almost home.
His world was rocked several months later. He felt comfortable in this new land, felt like he would be comfortable dying here, should that be sooner or later. Aye, there were monsters and monstrosities and undead everywhere, but they were merely different from those he had encountered before. Like all the other residents of Valiance Keep, he had become an able hand with sword and shield. He had become used to the constant stream of heroes and wannabes coming into town and leaving again, some to return alive, some dead, some undead, and many not at all. When he saw a new party of plate-clad figures, frost lining their strange skull decorated armor, he thought they were more of the same.
Then they had turned away from the tavern he was walking towards, and he saw their eyes glowed an unholy blue like flame beneath ice.
He had heard of the knights, the Ebon Blade, and the fact that guards walked past with tight eyes and cautious hands on weapons but did not draw said they were friends of the Alliance.
He simply had not expected to recognize a death knight.
They had not been twins when they met again. Time had walked by his side next to grief, lining his face and frosting his hair to silver prematurely. True frost had rimed his brother's golden hair, leaving it short and ragged. His brother's cheekbones stood out prominently under frost-burned too-pale skin, leaving him looking like one of the corpses of some poor unfortunate who had been caught out in one of the tundra's storms.
But his brother looked like a young corpse, barely a man, the brave youth who had left Lorderon oh-so-long-ago.
A stunned corpse, too. Shocked and bewildered as if he were the ghost, not his older brother.
He remembered the stories of Light's Hope. He knew that if these death knights were here, it was as allies.
And most importantly, this was his twin.
He really didn't give a damn if he looked ridiculous, lunging towards the death knight and enveloping him in a hug, babbling nonsense and bawling like a child. He certainly didn't give a damn about the tense moments where local guards and the other death knights had drawn weapons and were watching each other, certain that this was some sign that someone had violated the tentative peace.
All he cared about was the man in his arms, who had slowly, uncertainly raised his arms into an equally awkward hug. There were murmured apologies. There were tears. There was a hell of a lot of drinking. In the end, they agreed to not talk about what had happened, to move on with their lives -
as brothers. Not alone, not any more.
It was actually strange at first. His twin was not a powerful man in undeath, but he remained a competent one. He had been sent by Thassarian himself, along with his comrades, as a guard of Valiance Keep which was to become their base.
He actually felt now that this was home. After several months together, sharing a small house and relearning each other's habits and styles, he felt comfortable.
Well, almost.
He'd heard plenty of stories about unfaithful wives, sisters, daughters. How they would sneak out. The odd looks, the strange mannerisms. How to tell, what to do if one suspected.
But what did it mean when he began to see that in his twin?
He didn't know. And he would be the first to admit he didn't understand. It took him almost a month and a half to decide to make a move. The odd behavior was sporadic, once a week at most, more often every other week. But it continued. So one chill afternoon, he followed his brother out onto the tundra, out along the rocky shores. He had enough practice at hunting, and his older brother seemed to care very little about his surroundings. When his older brother stopped at a small cove, he waited. There wasn't enough cover for more than one person there (and really, what would a death knight do with a woman – or man – in intimate matters? Could they? Who would want to?), and so he presumed this was a temporary rest.
After over an hour of watching the gulls wheel through the air, penguins and seals frolic through cold waves and near but never onto the shore, he began to worry. Perhaps he'd missed something? Maybe his twin had gone off, to be alone – to do something. Something to himself? Oh, Light. High tide would swamp the hollow his brother had gone into, wiping away any signs of – No, he had to stop this!
He scampered down the rocks cautiously, going slow to make as little noise as possible. He rounded the last rock and peered into hell.
It was only a small corner of hell, really, but nonetheless. Blood was everywhere. There were several small corpses of flayed birds – thankfully, he could not recognized what kind, though he was trying very hard not to examine the pile of gore-soaked feathers near them. There was a small mammal squirming and mewling piteously in his twin's hand, banded muscle writhing without its protective coat but still horrifyingly, clearly alive, even as his older brother lifted his other hand, in the strange saronite gauntlet, and wrapped it around the beastie's head. Its peeping cries echoed oddly for a moment, rising and becoming somehow impossibly more frantic. Then the fingers began to close, hideously, deliberately slow.
"Aedric," he asked, not even realizing the calm voice was his. "What are you doing?"
Those horribly slow fingers smashed shut, finally thank the Light silencing the poor thing, and Aedric's frost blue eyes latched on to his, wide with shock.
"Dafyd?" Sweet Light, that voice. It sounded like his brother was speaking from the bottom of a well. It unnerved him, slowly from a distance, like an avalanche. "What are you doing here?"
"What am I doing? Aedric, what the hell do you think you're doing?! What could possibly possess you to – Gods, man, how can you possibly sound like I've done something wrong by sneaking up on you?!" He was advancing on his brother. Why was he getting closer to the man who had blood – so much blood! - dripping down his fingers with matted clumps of Light knew what, ha'mercy! "What do you think you're doing, and why should I bother listening?!"
His twin's head bowed, shoulders shaking. Sweet Light, not this. Not tears. He'd been astonished, wounded on his brother's behalf the first time he'd seen the slushy blood oozing from the corners of his eyes, a faint miasma wisping away from the sockets like smoke. Something about how they became the living dead... changed them, made even the most piously cried tears a horror.
A pity. At least, it had seemed like a pity at the time. Now, it was just another monstrosity.
"Dafyd... you don't understand." His brother's voice was still young, with reverberations that were from the evidence of youth that he'd had before undeath had added the unholy echoes.
"Then tell me! Enlighten me as to why you think this... this perversion is -!" He sputtered to a halt as his twin winced, finally letting the carcass in his hand fall before Aedric wrapped his arms around himself, hugging tight as if to hold in heat that no longer existed.
For a long moment, the only movement was the jerk and hitch of Aedric's shoulders as he worked to restrain tears. Dafyd stood as still as if he were the one who were dead, waiting for the call to judgement. Finally, his twin lifted his head.
Even with that evil blue glow, his eyes were wretched. "Some call it the Dark Hunger. Others, the Blood Lust. Suffering... we need to cause suffering, or we go mad. Feral. As wild and wretched as any of the rank and file undead. The hunger grows until it consumes us, or we sate it." He looked down at the carnage around him. "Why do you think so many death knights volunteer to patrol the tundra? We'd rather make slow, but righteous kills of the Keep's enemies, than to turn as mindless, devouring monsters upon our allies."
He was certain that the floor had dropped away from under him. Gone, completely and utterly. There was that old ring of certainty in his twin's voice, that he had always used to judge if his twin was lying. He wasn't.
Oh there was wiggle room – if his brother was wrong, if someone had lied to him and he simply believed it to be true -
He could not believe that his brother, cursed with undeath or not, would not try everything within his power to find another way.
Dafyd sat down heavily. "How long -" His voice broke. "How long have you been doing this? Sneaking out to...." He couldn't finish; he merely gestured weakly around the cove.
Aedric looked away. "From the beginning. We – you need to understand. None of us want to be monsters!"
Silence sat heavy between them. Finally, he pushed himself to ask the horrible, proper question. "How often?"
It made a horrid kind of sense. His brother had been sneaking out, engaging in illicit activities, doing... things... he wanted to hide.
And it had been happening more often lately.
"It's not... things have been quiet lately. The local adventurers have been taking care of the larger problems; we're finally managing to establish the Keep as - "
"What does any of this have to do with... this?"
Aedric still wouldn't meet his eyes. "I don't know what the others do. We don't talk about it. But I've found - " His voice broke again, so like the young man he'd been. "Animals aren't as... useful as... more intelligent... things."
He felt so cold. "Why?" Light, he hadn't meant to whisper it, to air it aloud, no matter how quietly.
"They can suffer in so many more ways."
It sounded as if Aedric felt the same about the answer.
The tide was finally starting to come in, wavelets licking nearer and nearer to the slaughter. The twins shared a look before moving out without a word, barely pausing long enough for Aedric to wash the gore off. They remained silent the entire journey home.
He knew he should speak about it, ask questions, beg for understanding. Something, anything, that might be done. Could they appeal to gods, or dragons, or -
Was there anything he could do?
Dafyd knew it was insane. He had no reason to feel guilty. It was not his fault that his older brother had been conscripted. It was not his fault that Arthas had gone mad and murdered his men. It certainly was not his fault that Arthas the monster had then raised the same poor souls as undead!
But he had not suffered. Not as his twin had. He had gone on and poorly or no, he had lived and experienced potential joys and all the ordinary moments of life. He had not suffered.
It haunted him over the next few days. It ate at him, as he watched with shadowed, wary eyes as Aedric became grumpier, snapping sharply when normally there would only be a roll of the eyes. He could see as his older brother got more and more on edge, his attitude more and more brittle.
He could see his twin descending into madness. The astonishing part was that he had been in denial so long, that his older brother had hid it so well.
They both knew when it was time.
He watched, from the living area of their small cottage on the outskirts of Valiance Keep, in the shadow of the great walls. He watched as his older brother took select pieces of his dark armor and put them on, taking the eerily humming great blade and slinging the baldric over his shoulder. Neither met each other's eyes as Aedric took an echoing breath. "I'll be back tomorrow. Possibly late enough that you'll think it's the day after."
"There's no need." His voice was so dry, for a moment he fancied that they both thought some stranger had crept into their house and was speaking from behind his shoulder.
Then his twin had looked at him, thinly hidden rage that was almost fiery hate within those impossible blue eyes. "Yes. There is." His voice was flat, the anger there tightly leashed.
A scream was squirming around in his chest like a mad flayed beastie, but somehow he took a deep breath and released words instead. "No." His voice cracked. "You... you said it works better when – when it's human."
The burning points of sapphire narrowed. "What are you saying?"
Sweet Light, he didn't know if he could do this. But he had to. It was the right thing, for so many reasons. And his older brother wasn't asking it, couldn't even seem to comprehend what was going on. "Me. Let me help. Do.... what you need to. To me."
He had no idea, in the end, how long they argued about it. Hours. But he was right. They both knew it. They knew it when they argued with hushed voices, hissing back and forth like strange snakes caught between the walls. They knew it when Aedric was crying blood and ice and poison, an incomprehensible look of love and (self?) loathing and gratitude twisting his face. They knew it when he was screaming into a makeshift gag, trying to stifle the sounds he made to his twin's use of a thin, small, Light help him so-sharp-dagger. They knew it, cleaning up the blood as he sipped at a healing potion, both of them with shaking hands but the light of sanity and compassion back in his twin's eyes.
It lasted almost three weeks.
Aedric, of course, said nothing, but when he caught his older brother quite literally almost kicking a puppy, crazed snarl on his lips and insanity clear in the eyes, it was obvious.
So they did it again.
And again.
And the months passed in their stately dance, muted and cold in the lands of the North.
He wasn't entirely sure how his older twin did it; their sessions were always varied, not just in intensity but what they did. It wasn't that they were never the same way twice, it was that he somehow always managed to twist things, metaphorically keep them sharp.
Even so, it seemed almost inevitable that it somehow would become routine.
They had both cried when they heard the news about Arthas' death. Not that either really mourned the once-prince but because it was clear; the curse of the Scourge still lay heavily upon the death knights. And almost a year after Dafyd first proposed they deal with his twin's problem themselves, it happened.
He was pinned to his bed, wrists bound by coarse rope running underneath it to each other, ankles the same. His world was a haze of sensation, trailing the blood dripping from strange patterns cut into his skin across countless bruises. "Dafyd. Dafyd!" Aedric's voice was a croon, his fingertips a caress down his cheek. "Do you trust me?"
He forced his eyes to focus on his twin. It felt worse than usual. His brother had been creative, precise. He felt as if he hovered on the edge of a precipice, almost weightless, ready to tip forward and float like a feather – not down to earth, but continue floating forever. "Do you trust me, twin?"
Somehow, he managed a nod. What a ridiculous question.
"Good." Aedric's voice was soft and rich with satisfaction.
Then he slammed his dagger down into Dafyd's chest, wrenching it off to the side. He could hear something crack even as Aedric pulled the dagger out and stabbed him again and again.
He'd gotten so much better about not screaming. That didn't matter now. He strained against the rope, howling mutedly around his gag, as pain erupted across his body. It lifted him up, indeed carrying him away, and for a moment everything felt... calm. He felt as if he floated above his body, watching his twin smash away at what remained of his chest even as his body writhed uselessly. It felt warm, and he could feel himself growing lighter as the strange horror faded away around him. In the timeless moment where it was all becoming light, he could see a strange aura around his body; flames of bruise purple and ember reds. The same colors coruscated around his twin, but his brother was a lit match to his body's inferno.
It was the colors he saw, forming a man who stood, dropping something from his hand before reaching both hands out towards the inferno. He did not warm his hands, though the flames licked out to caress him. Instead he beckoned impreiously.
For another timeless instant, Dafyd hung, torn. He could feel the Light on one side of him; gentle, waiting. Accepting. Even though he felt as if he'd fallen to the Dark, past redemption, it would welcome him home.
It would always welcome him home.
His twin was on the other side. Needing. Hurting.
And he could continue to do something about it.
It wasn't a difficult choice at all.
He obeyed his twin's call, flowing instead of falling back into the inferno, into his body.
And he screamed.
For two days they stayed in their house, Aedric holding him as they had when they were small children. He remained wrapped in his older brother's arms, his skin slowly repairing, losing the gangrene-ish tinge, the horrific wounds in his chest healing slowly. It was only by the second midday that his heart started beating again.
By nightfall, and with only a single healing potion later, one couldn't even tell he'd been dead.
They didn't talk with each other for at least another day. Aedric – who had been oh-so-gentle, even more than he ever had been when alive – had sat next to him, draping an arm over his shoulder. He had snuggled into it, and after a long while his older brother spoke. "At least a month. Maybe more."
His smile was genuine. He'd been more serene than he'd ever thought he could be. It was not, as he'd overheard so many veterans talking to each other about, that he had looked into hell and knew what the worst possible outcome could be and so why did it matter. It was that he knew he was right. They were right. The Light had not rejected him, he wasn't evil, he certainly knew his twin wasn't evil. It wasn't the smoothest road through life that they were taking, but at least they were going somewhere.
Together. The way it should be.
~end
I of course have been having to write it ever since. So. Er. This is one of the stories where I come up for air after a scene, reread it, and go ".... holy crap I'm a sick f##k." Not beta-ed, since I just want this monster out of my brain, and this way I can call it a Halloween horror thing and be done with it.
WARNINGS: rated R (minimum) for gore, torture of animals and people, and mind-f**kery. No, really, I'm not joking about this. Also, not really proof-read. And presumes knowledge of Warcraft. And was mostly written at ungodly in the morning. So in short, please feel free to skip this; I won't be at all offended.
This didn't really help me discover my problems and work through it, it just scared the ever-lovin' crap out of me.
They'd been born twins, his brother elder by all of five minutes. It had always seemed right, then, that his older brother had always been stronger, more outgoing, friendlier, the one all wanted to know and be with. He had been his twin's shadow.
He had felt naked when Prince Arthas had required his older brother's services as a groom. His older brother had been conscripted, taken away, leaving him an amputee with all his limbs, alone to run the hostelry.
It had gotten worse when he heard of his twin's fate. Like so many of Arthas's – Prince no longer, not here, not even in name! - men, he had gone off to Northrend, and died there. He had thought it was odd at the time: shouldn't he have known? Shouldn't he have felt the fatal blow, the long cold pain of freezing unto nothingness -
He could not even tell how his twin had died.
When his older brother had left, a part of him had died as well. Naked no longer, he was a walking ghost, like the undead monstrosities that plagued the land. Like them, he fled Lorderon's lands. He retreated to the strange wilds of Elwynn.
He... survived there. He didn't know how to live anymore. But somehow he built up a small farm by himself just outside of Goldshire, working with several other lonely men who had no one and no thing else. They kept to themselves and their whisky bottles, as rumors of the wider world baffled them in the tavern at week's end.
Alien beings, blue and hooved but not demons, walking amongst the Alliance. Strange magics and more undead. Undead who were not evil, but had in fact turned against Arthas and now defended Light's Hope. A growing battle against the once Prince.
He fought his own battle, deep inside the day he heard about that. The Alliance – and Light forfend, the Horde as well! - were traveling back to those bedamned shores to destroy the monster who made him a shadow of a man.
He left the farm the next day. A few weeks after that, he was in the Borean Tundra with hundreds of others, some conscripted, some volunteers. All had their stories of woe and grief, and there were many axes to grind against Lorderon's once Prince.
He began to feel more whole, here. There were others who understood. And in theory, he was not too far – a week at most! - from the place his twin had landed, had been stranded at, and perhaps had died at.
It made him feel like he was almost home.
His world was rocked several months later. He felt comfortable in this new land, felt like he would be comfortable dying here, should that be sooner or later. Aye, there were monsters and monstrosities and undead everywhere, but they were merely different from those he had encountered before. Like all the other residents of Valiance Keep, he had become an able hand with sword and shield. He had become used to the constant stream of heroes and wannabes coming into town and leaving again, some to return alive, some dead, some undead, and many not at all. When he saw a new party of plate-clad figures, frost lining their strange skull decorated armor, he thought they were more of the same.
Then they had turned away from the tavern he was walking towards, and he saw their eyes glowed an unholy blue like flame beneath ice.
He had heard of the knights, the Ebon Blade, and the fact that guards walked past with tight eyes and cautious hands on weapons but did not draw said they were friends of the Alliance.
He simply had not expected to recognize a death knight.
They had not been twins when they met again. Time had walked by his side next to grief, lining his face and frosting his hair to silver prematurely. True frost had rimed his brother's golden hair, leaving it short and ragged. His brother's cheekbones stood out prominently under frost-burned too-pale skin, leaving him looking like one of the corpses of some poor unfortunate who had been caught out in one of the tundra's storms.
But his brother looked like a young corpse, barely a man, the brave youth who had left Lorderon oh-so-long-ago.
A stunned corpse, too. Shocked and bewildered as if he were the ghost, not his older brother.
He remembered the stories of Light's Hope. He knew that if these death knights were here, it was as allies.
And most importantly, this was his twin.
He really didn't give a damn if he looked ridiculous, lunging towards the death knight and enveloping him in a hug, babbling nonsense and bawling like a child. He certainly didn't give a damn about the tense moments where local guards and the other death knights had drawn weapons and were watching each other, certain that this was some sign that someone had violated the tentative peace.
All he cared about was the man in his arms, who had slowly, uncertainly raised his arms into an equally awkward hug. There were murmured apologies. There were tears. There was a hell of a lot of drinking. In the end, they agreed to not talk about what had happened, to move on with their lives -
as brothers. Not alone, not any more.
It was actually strange at first. His twin was not a powerful man in undeath, but he remained a competent one. He had been sent by Thassarian himself, along with his comrades, as a guard of Valiance Keep which was to become their base.
He actually felt now that this was home. After several months together, sharing a small house and relearning each other's habits and styles, he felt comfortable.
Well, almost.
He'd heard plenty of stories about unfaithful wives, sisters, daughters. How they would sneak out. The odd looks, the strange mannerisms. How to tell, what to do if one suspected.
But what did it mean when he began to see that in his twin?
He didn't know. And he would be the first to admit he didn't understand. It took him almost a month and a half to decide to make a move. The odd behavior was sporadic, once a week at most, more often every other week. But it continued. So one chill afternoon, he followed his brother out onto the tundra, out along the rocky shores. He had enough practice at hunting, and his older brother seemed to care very little about his surroundings. When his older brother stopped at a small cove, he waited. There wasn't enough cover for more than one person there (and really, what would a death knight do with a woman – or man – in intimate matters? Could they? Who would want to?), and so he presumed this was a temporary rest.
After over an hour of watching the gulls wheel through the air, penguins and seals frolic through cold waves and near but never onto the shore, he began to worry. Perhaps he'd missed something? Maybe his twin had gone off, to be alone – to do something. Something to himself? Oh, Light. High tide would swamp the hollow his brother had gone into, wiping away any signs of – No, he had to stop this!
He scampered down the rocks cautiously, going slow to make as little noise as possible. He rounded the last rock and peered into hell.
It was only a small corner of hell, really, but nonetheless. Blood was everywhere. There were several small corpses of flayed birds – thankfully, he could not recognized what kind, though he was trying very hard not to examine the pile of gore-soaked feathers near them. There was a small mammal squirming and mewling piteously in his twin's hand, banded muscle writhing without its protective coat but still horrifyingly, clearly alive, even as his older brother lifted his other hand, in the strange saronite gauntlet, and wrapped it around the beastie's head. Its peeping cries echoed oddly for a moment, rising and becoming somehow impossibly more frantic. Then the fingers began to close, hideously, deliberately slow.
"Aedric," he asked, not even realizing the calm voice was his. "What are you doing?"
Those horribly slow fingers smashed shut, finally thank the Light silencing the poor thing, and Aedric's frost blue eyes latched on to his, wide with shock.
"Dafyd?" Sweet Light, that voice. It sounded like his brother was speaking from the bottom of a well. It unnerved him, slowly from a distance, like an avalanche. "What are you doing here?"
"What am I doing? Aedric, what the hell do you think you're doing?! What could possibly possess you to – Gods, man, how can you possibly sound like I've done something wrong by sneaking up on you?!" He was advancing on his brother. Why was he getting closer to the man who had blood – so much blood! - dripping down his fingers with matted clumps of Light knew what, ha'mercy! "What do you think you're doing, and why should I bother listening?!"
His twin's head bowed, shoulders shaking. Sweet Light, not this. Not tears. He'd been astonished, wounded on his brother's behalf the first time he'd seen the slushy blood oozing from the corners of his eyes, a faint miasma wisping away from the sockets like smoke. Something about how they became the living dead... changed them, made even the most piously cried tears a horror.
A pity. At least, it had seemed like a pity at the time. Now, it was just another monstrosity.
"Dafyd... you don't understand." His brother's voice was still young, with reverberations that were from the evidence of youth that he'd had before undeath had added the unholy echoes.
"Then tell me! Enlighten me as to why you think this... this perversion is -!" He sputtered to a halt as his twin winced, finally letting the carcass in his hand fall before Aedric wrapped his arms around himself, hugging tight as if to hold in heat that no longer existed.
For a long moment, the only movement was the jerk and hitch of Aedric's shoulders as he worked to restrain tears. Dafyd stood as still as if he were the one who were dead, waiting for the call to judgement. Finally, his twin lifted his head.
Even with that evil blue glow, his eyes were wretched. "Some call it the Dark Hunger. Others, the Blood Lust. Suffering... we need to cause suffering, or we go mad. Feral. As wild and wretched as any of the rank and file undead. The hunger grows until it consumes us, or we sate it." He looked down at the carnage around him. "Why do you think so many death knights volunteer to patrol the tundra? We'd rather make slow, but righteous kills of the Keep's enemies, than to turn as mindless, devouring monsters upon our allies."
He was certain that the floor had dropped away from under him. Gone, completely and utterly. There was that old ring of certainty in his twin's voice, that he had always used to judge if his twin was lying. He wasn't.
Oh there was wiggle room – if his brother was wrong, if someone had lied to him and he simply believed it to be true -
He could not believe that his brother, cursed with undeath or not, would not try everything within his power to find another way.
Dafyd sat down heavily. "How long -" His voice broke. "How long have you been doing this? Sneaking out to...." He couldn't finish; he merely gestured weakly around the cove.
Aedric looked away. "From the beginning. We – you need to understand. None of us want to be monsters!"
Silence sat heavy between them. Finally, he pushed himself to ask the horrible, proper question. "How often?"
It made a horrid kind of sense. His brother had been sneaking out, engaging in illicit activities, doing... things... he wanted to hide.
And it had been happening more often lately.
"It's not... things have been quiet lately. The local adventurers have been taking care of the larger problems; we're finally managing to establish the Keep as - "
"What does any of this have to do with... this?"
Aedric still wouldn't meet his eyes. "I don't know what the others do. We don't talk about it. But I've found - " His voice broke again, so like the young man he'd been. "Animals aren't as... useful as... more intelligent... things."
He felt so cold. "Why?" Light, he hadn't meant to whisper it, to air it aloud, no matter how quietly.
"They can suffer in so many more ways."
It sounded as if Aedric felt the same about the answer.
The tide was finally starting to come in, wavelets licking nearer and nearer to the slaughter. The twins shared a look before moving out without a word, barely pausing long enough for Aedric to wash the gore off. They remained silent the entire journey home.
He knew he should speak about it, ask questions, beg for understanding. Something, anything, that might be done. Could they appeal to gods, or dragons, or -
Was there anything he could do?
Dafyd knew it was insane. He had no reason to feel guilty. It was not his fault that his older brother had been conscripted. It was not his fault that Arthas had gone mad and murdered his men. It certainly was not his fault that Arthas the monster had then raised the same poor souls as undead!
But he had not suffered. Not as his twin had. He had gone on and poorly or no, he had lived and experienced potential joys and all the ordinary moments of life. He had not suffered.
It haunted him over the next few days. It ate at him, as he watched with shadowed, wary eyes as Aedric became grumpier, snapping sharply when normally there would only be a roll of the eyes. He could see as his older brother got more and more on edge, his attitude more and more brittle.
He could see his twin descending into madness. The astonishing part was that he had been in denial so long, that his older brother had hid it so well.
They both knew when it was time.
He watched, from the living area of their small cottage on the outskirts of Valiance Keep, in the shadow of the great walls. He watched as his older brother took select pieces of his dark armor and put them on, taking the eerily humming great blade and slinging the baldric over his shoulder. Neither met each other's eyes as Aedric took an echoing breath. "I'll be back tomorrow. Possibly late enough that you'll think it's the day after."
"There's no need." His voice was so dry, for a moment he fancied that they both thought some stranger had crept into their house and was speaking from behind his shoulder.
Then his twin had looked at him, thinly hidden rage that was almost fiery hate within those impossible blue eyes. "Yes. There is." His voice was flat, the anger there tightly leashed.
A scream was squirming around in his chest like a mad flayed beastie, but somehow he took a deep breath and released words instead. "No." His voice cracked. "You... you said it works better when – when it's human."
The burning points of sapphire narrowed. "What are you saying?"
Sweet Light, he didn't know if he could do this. But he had to. It was the right thing, for so many reasons. And his older brother wasn't asking it, couldn't even seem to comprehend what was going on. "Me. Let me help. Do.... what you need to. To me."
He had no idea, in the end, how long they argued about it. Hours. But he was right. They both knew it. They knew it when they argued with hushed voices, hissing back and forth like strange snakes caught between the walls. They knew it when Aedric was crying blood and ice and poison, an incomprehensible look of love and (self?) loathing and gratitude twisting his face. They knew it when he was screaming into a makeshift gag, trying to stifle the sounds he made to his twin's use of a thin, small, Light help him so-sharp-dagger. They knew it, cleaning up the blood as he sipped at a healing potion, both of them with shaking hands but the light of sanity and compassion back in his twin's eyes.
It lasted almost three weeks.
Aedric, of course, said nothing, but when he caught his older brother quite literally almost kicking a puppy, crazed snarl on his lips and insanity clear in the eyes, it was obvious.
So they did it again.
And again.
And the months passed in their stately dance, muted and cold in the lands of the North.
He wasn't entirely sure how his older twin did it; their sessions were always varied, not just in intensity but what they did. It wasn't that they were never the same way twice, it was that he somehow always managed to twist things, metaphorically keep them sharp.
Even so, it seemed almost inevitable that it somehow would become routine.
They had both cried when they heard the news about Arthas' death. Not that either really mourned the once-prince but because it was clear; the curse of the Scourge still lay heavily upon the death knights. And almost a year after Dafyd first proposed they deal with his twin's problem themselves, it happened.
He was pinned to his bed, wrists bound by coarse rope running underneath it to each other, ankles the same. His world was a haze of sensation, trailing the blood dripping from strange patterns cut into his skin across countless bruises. "Dafyd. Dafyd!" Aedric's voice was a croon, his fingertips a caress down his cheek. "Do you trust me?"
He forced his eyes to focus on his twin. It felt worse than usual. His brother had been creative, precise. He felt as if he hovered on the edge of a precipice, almost weightless, ready to tip forward and float like a feather – not down to earth, but continue floating forever. "Do you trust me, twin?"
Somehow, he managed a nod. What a ridiculous question.
"Good." Aedric's voice was soft and rich with satisfaction.
Then he slammed his dagger down into Dafyd's chest, wrenching it off to the side. He could hear something crack even as Aedric pulled the dagger out and stabbed him again and again.
He'd gotten so much better about not screaming. That didn't matter now. He strained against the rope, howling mutedly around his gag, as pain erupted across his body. It lifted him up, indeed carrying him away, and for a moment everything felt... calm. He felt as if he floated above his body, watching his twin smash away at what remained of his chest even as his body writhed uselessly. It felt warm, and he could feel himself growing lighter as the strange horror faded away around him. In the timeless moment where it was all becoming light, he could see a strange aura around his body; flames of bruise purple and ember reds. The same colors coruscated around his twin, but his brother was a lit match to his body's inferno.
It was the colors he saw, forming a man who stood, dropping something from his hand before reaching both hands out towards the inferno. He did not warm his hands, though the flames licked out to caress him. Instead he beckoned impreiously.
For another timeless instant, Dafyd hung, torn. He could feel the Light on one side of him; gentle, waiting. Accepting. Even though he felt as if he'd fallen to the Dark, past redemption, it would welcome him home.
It would always welcome him home.
His twin was on the other side. Needing. Hurting.
And he could continue to do something about it.
It wasn't a difficult choice at all.
He obeyed his twin's call, flowing instead of falling back into the inferno, into his body.
And he screamed.
For two days they stayed in their house, Aedric holding him as they had when they were small children. He remained wrapped in his older brother's arms, his skin slowly repairing, losing the gangrene-ish tinge, the horrific wounds in his chest healing slowly. It was only by the second midday that his heart started beating again.
By nightfall, and with only a single healing potion later, one couldn't even tell he'd been dead.
They didn't talk with each other for at least another day. Aedric – who had been oh-so-gentle, even more than he ever had been when alive – had sat next to him, draping an arm over his shoulder. He had snuggled into it, and after a long while his older brother spoke. "At least a month. Maybe more."
His smile was genuine. He'd been more serene than he'd ever thought he could be. It was not, as he'd overheard so many veterans talking to each other about, that he had looked into hell and knew what the worst possible outcome could be and so why did it matter. It was that he knew he was right. They were right. The Light had not rejected him, he wasn't evil, he certainly knew his twin wasn't evil. It wasn't the smoothest road through life that they were taking, but at least they were going somewhere.
Together. The way it should be.
~end
